In all countries where water is scarce, unfailing springs are objects of veneration, and are clothed not only with undying verdure, but with a continuous growth of legends : from the day when Moses smote the rock in the wilderness, and the stream gushed forth to the thirsty Israelites, to the present hour, water, which is man's first necessity, will in drought-smitten countries be hailed with more than usual reverence. The devout Mussulman, sinks a well and erects a fountain
lor the public good, and his friends bury his body in the neighbourhood of his last act.
&quot; Rest, weary pilgrim, rest and pray For the kind soul of Sybil Grey, Who built this Cross and Well. &quot;
Christian and Mahommedan, and all creeds and races, men and animals, yield unanimously to the great want, which in a thirsty land alone will bring the lion and the lamb to drink in the same stream. I have myself seen in moonlight, animals of various and conflicting natures revelling in the rest of nature's armistice, drinking in crowds at the solitary pool ; the only source of water in the desert.
Th e Cypriotes in their natural love of the marvellous insist upon the mystery attached to the Kythrea springs, but they attach no importance to the extensive subterranean water-stores of the Messaria plain, simply because they do not see it issue from the ground : still the fact is there, the water in vast quantities always exists, and were it tapped at a higher level, it would flow (as it actually does in certain places), and exhibit the same principle upon a much larger scale than the romantic and picturesque mountain springs of Kythrea.
As we increased our altitude the scenery improved

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Created at June 2008